It’s site search, it’s merchandising – it’s two functions in one
Site search has become very good at getting site visitors directly to the products they’re looking for – perhaps too good, according to some industry experts. “There have been a lot of usability studies that suggest site operators might be losing something on site search,” John Squire, vice president of business development, at Coremetrics Inc., tells Internet Retailer. “People get through sites quickly to the product they want to see instead of poking around on different tabs experiencing the brand on the site. But retailers are realizing they want to be able to stock the shelves like they do in a store and bring to the front products they’d like to sell.”
In response, some e-retailers are using information gathered from site search to not only refine their keyword purchases on web search engines, but also to set up relevant cross-sell opportunities on product pages.
Squire tells of one large retailer who looked up the most-searched terms on its site, plus the top-converting terms on its site, and purchased the relevant keywords. “When anyone using a web search engine clicked on those keywords, they were delivered to a specific product page deep within the site. And it didn’t stop there,” Squire says. “They took cross-sell reports they had from Coremetrics and put the top cross selling product for the searched product on the same page.” Starting with about 100 keywords, the test showed an increase in margin contribution from the related pre-cuts.
“The strategy is that you use search terms and search activities on your own site to drive your buying of keywords south on the web. Then when you land someone deep within your site, why not pair that with what you know sells well with that keyword. What ends up happening is that not only do you have the opportunity covert someone on the product they’d looked for but you have five other opportunities,” he says.
Squire adds that older site search packages may not have the flexibility to set up such opportunities on the site, but that newer products are offering this type of functionality.
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